1 Thessalonians 1:9-10

"...They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead-Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath."

Everywhere today men live in bondage, serving their idols in fear and uncertainty. They are ignorant of their Creator-the God who loved them to the point of sending His only Son to die for their sins, that they might be delivered from this bondage. “Whoever will call upon the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on Him…of whom they have never heard, and how can they hear without a preacher…?”

O God, raise up workers from our midst to proclaim the risen Christ to peoples who now worship worthless idols.

Daur People of China

(Continued from yesterday)

In August of 1881, Joseph became ill with a high fever and lost consciousness. When he revived he was almost completely paralyzed and could not speak. He was sent to Europe for treatment, where he remained for four years, gradually improving. By 1886, Bishop Schereschewsky, now in America, realized he would never completely recover his health. He wanted to continue with translation work, to revise his Mandarin Old Testament and also to start a Bible translation into the Wenli version, an “easy-to-understand Chinese.” But would the church let him return to China? For nine years his board in America deliberated.

By the end of 1894, still in America, the bishop had completed his first draft of the Wenli Bible, and again asked the board of missions to send him back to China. He pled that he desperately needed a Chinese scribe to help put the text into more commonly used Chinese characters. Finally, in August 1895, he sailed with his wife and daughter back to China.

In 1896 the Bible Society agreed to publish the bishop’s revision of the Mandarin Bible; they also accepted his Wenli Bible, which he completed in 1902. Schereschewsky’s final project was a Wenli reference Bible, which he completed only two days before he died in 1906.-AL from Schereschewsky of China, by Massey H. Shepherd, Jr., The National Council, 1962.